As is the typical Dutch trait, Giovanni van Bronckhorst can speak in an open and direct manner but something he said on Saturday afternoon spoke volumes.
The setting was the press conference after the very underwhelming 1-1 draw at home to Livingston, where the Dutchman fielded questions on his team’s latest disappointment as well as criticism of his position.
As manager, Gio is obviously responsible overall for how the team plays, selection, changes and everything else on the pitch. Whilst stating the obvious, it is clearly not working at present. Following the Liverpool debacle at Ibrox, a response was essential. Gio has not been able to provoke this from his side, if anything it has gotten worse despite two wins in the games against Motherwell and Dundee. The pattern of those two fixtures continued against Livingston, it was a result that was coming and there can be few complaints at dropping points given how poor the effort was.
van Bronckhorst is far from daft, he knows that pressure is growing. In what has to be an insight to some of his thinking, he made something of a concession when asked if his players were still buying into his plan:
“I also understand that. It is one thing for sure when you are not performing as a coach, as a team, when you are not getting your results then of course people will not buy into it.”
“That is not just for me that is for every coach in this profession. You see if it is not going well then eventually it is end of story. That is for everyone. But I think we can still turn it around.”
What is for sure is that the end of the story will get closer if Rangers drop points again next Saturday or suffer another severe loss in Europe on Wednesday.
Wanting to turn it around and being able to achieve that are very different things.